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56
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Summary

Another May Day come and gone! After we catch up on how radicals around the world celebrated it in the streets this year, we'll turn back the clock a few decades to a particularly notorious May: Paris in 1968. The strikes and riots that nearly toppled the French state—as well as the Situationist International, those Marxist-influenced art radicals whose theories influenced the uprising—are the topic of our main feature for this episode. One of the key texts coming from the Situationist tradition, Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life, appears on the Chopping Block. Listeners weigh in on future episodes, "Uncle Ted," and the Ukraine episode and anarchist strategy. And of course there's more news, events, prisoner birthdays, and other goodies.

Notes and Links

In today’s main feature, we scratched the surface of the contribution of the Situationist International to contemporary radical thought. If your interest is piqued and you’re looking for more in-depth exploration of these ideas, there are plenty of resources available in print and on the internet. A great starting place is our topic of this episode’s Chopping Block, Raoul Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life; it’s available for free online at the Anarchist Library, as is On The Poverty of Student Life, which we mentioned in our discussion of the Situationists.

Of course, another classic is The Society of the Spectacle. It’s not an easily accessible starting point, but it is a crucial text if you’re trying to understand the Situationist analysis. Basically every piece of paper Guy Debord ever wrote on can be found on Not Bored (if you can tolerate Bill Brown’s Debord-esque attitude), and the Bureau of Public Secrets is another outpost of translations of Situ material (if you can tolerate the web design). The bureau also hosts this killer list of graffiti slogans from May ‘68,, which a crew of our friends read for this episode’s feature.

Cody Sutherlin of the Tinley Park 5, who plead guilty to three counts of armed violence for his role in storming a restaurant during an organizing meeting of white supremacists, will be released from prison next month! Here is a link to his release fund.

Earth First organizers are planning a tour to circulate the newly published Direct Action Manual and share direct action skills; if you’re interested in having them come near you, email dam at earthfirstjournal dot org.

Open Books in Pensacola, Florida, which houses a books to prisoners collective, was hit pretty hard in recent flooding and suffered a lot of damage. Read their call for support.

Anarchist prisoner Casey Brezik is requesting books and letters to help chip away at his 12 year sentence for attempting to attack the Governor of Missouri.

About CrimethInc.

CrimethInc. is a rebel alliance—a decentralized network pledged to anonymous collective action—a breakout from the prisons of our age. We strive to reinvent our lives and our world according to the principles of self-determination and mutual aid.

We believe that you should be free to dispose of your limitless potential on your own terms: that no government, market, or ideology should be able to dictate what your life can be. If you agree, let’s do something about it.